Thursday, August 10, 2017

Moscow has Completely Failed Russian Far East, Russian Analysts Say

Paul
Goble

Staunton, August 9 – For decades,
Moscow has been making “empty promises” to do something about the Russian Far
East; but its failure to follow through an act on these words means that the
problems of the Far East and Siberia are becoming only worse day by day,”
Rosbalt analyst Dmitry Remizov says.

Andrey Kobyakov, an economist at
Moscow State University, points out that Russia “today simply doesn’t have any
institution responsible for scientific strategic planning of development” and
that despite much talk no real steps have been taken. Instead, there has been
moves in the opposite and negative direction.

The regional affairs ministry “as
currently organized” isn’t involved with this work. And “the key institutions
which like the council for the development of productive resources have in
practice been disbanded,” he says.That
is simultaneously a tragedy and a retreat from the arrangements that existed in
Soviet times.

There must be a complex state
program and there must be an institution committed and able to implement it.
That is the only way to hold the population in the region, attract investment
from domestic and foreign sources, and ensure that Siberia and the Russian Far
East don’t deteriorate still further.

Nikita Krichevsky, a senior scholar
at the Moscow Institute of Economics, says that there is little or no prospect
that Moscow is going to take any real steps to address the region’s demographic
problems or any others.As a result,
people will leave, and China will play an ever greater role, by applying
pressure on regional and federal officials.

Bair Tsyrenov, a Buryat deputy
agrees both in terms of diagnosis and prospects. “Without serious government
programs, the problems won’t be resolved. Siberia and the Far East are special
regions, the development of which always in tsarist Russia and especially
inthe Soviet period required stimuli so
that people would stay living there.

Unfortunately, he says, Moscow is
quite prepared to spend enormous sums on gigantist projects; but it isn’t
willing to develop and spend money on more mundane and more effective smaller
ones.

And Stanislav Zakharov, a regional
activist, says that the problem with Chinese businessman is especially
worrisome because despite rules limiting their activities, these people rely on
using corrupt relationships with local and federal officials to do an end run
around the rules and behave exactly as they like.

“We have already heard for many decades about the
growing problems of the Far East and Siberia,” he says; “but in fact, no one
tries to solve them: the authorities, both federal and region, only make new
promises.” If that pattern continues, the region will be “transformed into a
desert,” without people, without forests and without water supplies.